Damian Thompson is Editor of Telegraph Blogs and a columnist for the Daily Telegraph. He was once described by The Church Times as a "blood-crazed ferret". He is on Twitter as HolySmoke. His latest book is The Fix: How addiction is taking over your world. He also writes about classical music for The Spectator.

David Cameron and the Old Etonian art of apologising for Britain's simply ghastly colonial past

David Cameron has, on our behalf, shouldered the burden of Britain's colonial guilt for creating the wretchedly dysfunctional state of Pakistan. The words noblesse oblige come to mind. One can make too much of the fact that the Prime Minister was schooled at Eton, but there are times when his tone of voice makes it impossible to forget. This is one of them. The Prime Minister's apology conjures up the ghosts of Sir Ian Gilmour and Harold Macmillan, beneath whose well-cut tweeds beat the hearts of internationalist liberals. Middle-class Tory jingoism was not to their liking; but Eton had taught them the good manners to conceal their disdain, at least in public.

Perhaps I'm being to unfair – to Gilmour and Macmillan, that is, for despite his Oxford First Cameron has never acquired their intellectual hinterland. Also, unlike those elder statesmen, he plays down his toffery; Macmillan, a gent of fairly recent creation, played it up; only Gilmour seemed truly at ease with his inheritance. But all three fit Enoch Powell's description of the "High Whig", anxiously espousing progressive causes lest they find themselves swept away by the tide of history. Edward Pearce once said of grand, Left-wing Tories that they brought to mind the words: "Daddy, daddy, there are men coming up the drive!" In Cameron's case, the "little people" he wants to keep happy are not so much the working classes as the representatives of fashionable pressure groups. As it happens, they're particularly restless at the moment, what with the cuts and all – but never underestimate the power of an apology for our colonial misdeeds, particularly when it's delivered with such languidly heartfelt charm.